It’s a photo-op, not a question-op

April 22, 2006

If a head of state is at an event, and a protestor starts screaming, I understand escorting that person from the premises. If a head of state is at an event, and a journalist asks him or her a question, having government agents whisk him away is far more troubling.

President [tag]Hu[/tag] can’t suppress dissent in the United States like he does in China, but the Bush administration is helping out where it can.

According to a CNN Wire report, CNN producer Joe [tag]Vaccarello[/tag] was removed by Secret Service officers “from covering a private meeting Friday at Yale University after calling out a question about whether Chinese President Hu Jintao had seen protesters lined up outside”:

Vaccarello was told he had broken a rule against asking questions at the “photo op,” during which Hu and Levin exchanged gifts and Hu met with four students. Vaccarello was escorted from the building by members of the Secret Service who were escorting people in and out of the building.

Yale didn’t tell Vaccarello he couldn’t ask a question, so he did. If Hu didn’t like the question, he was free to ignore it (which, as it turns out, he did). Following the “mistake,” U.S. [tag]Secret Service[/tag] officials removed Vaccarello, a move which Yale endorsed, calling the Hu’s meeting talk a “very intimate event.”

Granted, this could have been worse. Vaccarello was merely removed from the meeting; he wasn’t charged with a crime. But why government officials would cooperate with protecting Hu from a reporter’s question is a mystery.

Not really a mystery
China is propping up the Republicans’ deficit spending. Can’t piss off the Chinese president, otherwise he’ll dump dollars for the euro. I knew all the talk of Bush “pressing” Hu on human rights was a joke, as if the administration has any room to lecture on that issue.

What we just witnessed this week was China’s gradual move in surpassing the US as a world power. We are becoming what the Soviet Union was during the Cold War, a shell of a superpower whose only “power” is it’s nuclear arsenal.

  • Nice, how we go out of our way to be so charitable to a Stalinst pig who runs a government that executes its political prisoners on the schedule of its medical clinics to harvest organs for transplant. $160,000 for a heart transplant, $60,000 for a liver, $40,000 for a kidney.

    Enjoy your cheap clothes made by the prisoners who replaced all the union workers here.

    All hail President Hu, buyer of American debt and provider of cheap crap.

  • If it were supposed to be a *private* meeting between Yale’s President and the tyrant Hu, then why invite journalists? If it’s just a photo-op a staff photoographer can take care of it — we did that all the time at San Francisco’s City Hall, for visits of foreig officials such Nikita Khrushchev, Frol Kozlov, Anatas Mikoyan, and they do it all the time at the White House. If you invite *journalists* to the event you should expect questions … at least in a civilized society you should.

  • Presumably we have some political motivation for having Hu here and ithat motivation isn’t to embarrass and humiliate him or discourage him from wanting anything more to do with us.

    Yet, from what I understand, we’ve been consistently finding ways to do just that. I assume it comes from the incompetence in this Administration, fueled by indifference, for anything but keeping its own people on message. It seems amazing that this group who has so successfully kept out dissenters from all of Bush’s press conferences couldn’t manage it with a foreign dignitary, but I think that’s just a reflection of their lack of interest in researching the subject.

    Empathy, the base from which diplomacy must stem, is sorely lacking with them, or they wouldn’t be such assholes.

    So my feeling is that it was reasonable to escort the CNN guy off of the premises in order to try to mollify the feelings of Hu, based on the premise that our relationships with China may depend on Hu’s feelings. But it sounds like too little, too late, from what I’ve read on how the Chinese are taking our insults to Hu. The damage that this Administration manages to do around the world that it isn’t even aware of is awe-inspiring.

  • there is something really inappropriate about the secret service policing “speech issues” in bush’s presence..

    this is not the first time during the bush presidency that the secret service or local police have prevented opponents of bush policies or journalists from attending an event or removed them from that event, or arrested protesters.

    this is not appropriate activity for the secret service.

    their job is to protect the president and other top officials.

    it is not to make decisions about what is or is not proper speech at a presidential event.

    does anyone know how the secret service being used in this capacity in the george w. bush administration differs from previous administrations?

  • opionATL,

    You have it correct. The Secret Service’s job is to protect the body of the President, not to serve as the RNC’s Praetorian Guard, so that the Regal Moron won’t be embarrassed, which is precisely what it is doing during the Bush presidency.

  • Actually, if the Secret Service is now the Praetorian Guard, it’s too bad they can’t follow the example of the original Praetorian Guard and how they took care of that evil little prick Caligula. I’m willing to see our evil little prick disposed of any way that presents itself.

  • This isn’t the Praetorian Gaurd, and this isn’t ancient Rome. This is 21st century USA and I feel like a victim of a bloodless coup that happened in Y2K I am so repulsed by these thug’s despotic behavior I think they deserve whatever humiliation they garnish. They don’t have a problem with the ethics of the Chinese government because they think the same way. Yes we owe China tons of money, but how did we ever get in such a pickle anyway? And yes it is not right to be rude to your honored guests but we do have some first ammendment rights in this country. It’s sickening how the Bush people use government resources to redefine the management of those resources and limit the rights of the people. This is just another example of privlege trumping honest transparency in our institutions. These p[eople violate our trust every day.

  • If it wasn’t time to ask questions, don’t start yelling. I have a feeling that most of us wouldn’t like some pro lifer yelling about dead babies while a solemn event is occurring (like a state visit, for example).

    Freedom of speech isn’t freedom to cause a disturbance any ‘ole time you wish. He was the only guy who started yelling questions, right? Sounds like an ass.

  • “Sounds like an ass.”

    No argument there, but from what I recall the usual procedure during similar visits is for reporters to shout questions and the honored guests to ignore them. It is a time-honored tradition. To call it an “intimate occasion” after the fact is in effect creating a problem where none used to exist. And it wasn’t like he was Fred Phelps at a funeral, for instance–just a reporter hollering out a question.

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